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Interesting! For some reason I assumed that dissociation was an emotional/mental thing and didn't relate to the physical body but it does make sense. It is the weirdest and most frightening experience.

Thanks for sharing with me. I am very new to these concepts in relation to myself so all information is welcome. 

I can relate to the feelings you describe. For a short time after I had posted on the forum I felt it too. I was looking at the number of people on the site and thinking "Why is noone posting replies?" I did a trick I learnt under similar situations - went away made myself a hot chocolate and watched a catch up of one of my favourite series, came back and bingo all these replies.

What do I write? For a couple of years now I have been trying to stay focussed enough to work my way through a Writer's Course online and a Proof-reading & Editing Course online. I was delighted when I got very positive reviews from the Writer's Course and for a while I was writing every day following their guidelines of submitting work to magazines etc. ...but I stopped to cope with life. I started the Proof-reading Course and loved the detail of it ...again life interrupted. So now I have paid for both courses and they are both sitting there waiting for me to continue. It is finding the motivation, dragging my mind into focus, stopping the dissociation, deciding that life is worth the effort, believing in myself...and the list goes on.

In the meantime I role play in the online 'game' called Second Life. I run a small role play community there and we 'role play' in real time writing our stories as we go along. I encourage others to do so too and support some players with mental issues like mine. I would like to do more but deep inside I know that this is dissociation and keeping me from my 'real' life issues. But I don't beat myself up over it as it has its own benefits also.

I would love to read some of your poetry sometime if you feel like sharing it. And yes little steps each day and even if you don't manage that don't beat yourself up about it.

Hello Again 

It is all a bit of a shock to me at the moment. I have always been so physical and active, always been so "well" and full of life. I have studied 'self help' and even been a therapist. I guess that too can be a part of the behaviours of PTSD. I am still processing the fact that all my well-controlled life has been about coping with PTSD. So from therapist to patient and learning to ask for help rather than helping.

Lovely to meet you. Think I might stick around and see what happens 

Thank you! it takes a lot of courage to live each day but the last few days I have the found the courage to share who I really am and it's scary.

Something I wrote this morning...

MAYBE TOMORROW

I drag a lumpy old cushion to my cold stone doorstep. Wrapped in a fleece-lined hoodie, double socks and a deep-red soft wrap I place pen to paper in the hope of re-kindled creativity. I had promised I would make it to the Beer Garden opposite today but this, at least, is a beginning.

I study the mossy cobbles at my feet for the first time this year. April in Devon lifts the daffodil heads bobbing above the damp ferns. They still struggle against the chill breeze off the sea as it funnels past the remains of my old friend the Holly. Now a clumsy stump under the telephone wires. A skeleton cast aside by the estate on a day when I was not here to protest. The two poor camellias, now exposed, offer a solitary flower hidden in the glossy green leaves amongst the struggling buds.

The crocosmia has already taken over the flower bed. I had promised myself that I would thin them out this year but they strike through the white quartz stones collected over the years from the beach below, jostling aside oyster shells from the ancient midden behind the house,  multi-coloured glass bottles and a twisted shell-shaped silver spoon.

In contrast, the newly-painted, stark, white wall of the chapel hangs with the remains of the once proud clematus that used to bring exclamations from visitors clear across the valley as it flung itself in ravishing pink splendour over the chapel roof. Now stray fingers hang valiantly from the eaves, a few leaves hopefully a sign that it will once again lovingly embrace the hymns on a Sunday.

My eyes are drawn to the one offensive plastic pot amongst the mossy terracotta jumble; a testament to the careless builders with no regard for peace or pride. I remind myself I still have to re-pot the azalea properly but it will have to wait for a miracle bag of compost to turn up.

London pride spills over the curve of an old grinding stone, a soft pale-yellow primrose at its centre. Sheltered from the wind and thrusting proud against its winter fleece a Blue Moon rose; a present from a kindly neighbour with whom I once quietly shared a childhood memory of my mother's rose garden.

Anxiety creeps into my chest and begins to clench a fist around my heart. My pen falls silent a while. I listen to the bird song, the distant drawing of tides over cobbles and high above the lonely keening of a solitary buzzard. Pheasant calls mingle with seagull cries ...

And suddenly, all is broken. Estate strimmers slice across the page shattering my pen. Rapidly I retreat inside, cats nipping past my ankles, back into the safety of the house.

Perhaps tomorrow I will make it past the doorstep.

I hear you!

I haven't been diagnosed PTSD as yet and new to this site today. it has been a year of physical exhaustion and loosing the feeling in my legs slowly, followed by endless tests, ending in 'nothing physical wrong must be psychological" I only relate this quickly because over that year I have had to give up working and try to find another source of income, persuade the benefits system to pay me, work through the dreadful stress of dealing with people that don't understand within the benefits system and even Citizen's Advice. Result - I haven't paid my rent for three months, have a ridiculous heating bill. Now can't afford to heat my home and I eat every other day.

Constantly cold and hungry and fearing to hear from the landlord every day...

For just over a year I have been loosing the feeling in my legs. After every test known to man or beast nothing physical has been found. PTSD realated? beginning to think so.

Totaly relate to this. I use the online game Second Life to dissociate. I have a complete second persona who role plays sometimes nearly 12-18 hours a day. When the internet goes down...major panic.

Hey Sarah.

I just joined this forum as my first. I have not been 'diagnosed' or labelled but I recognise my own symptoms from the descriptions on this site.

I am a gentle soul just trying to find my way out of the morass of past trauma I have 'managed to cope with' up until last year.

Happy to meet you and be part of a support system for you if I can.

Hey there!

New to the site and also to PTSD. I am pretty sure it is what I am coping with. After a year of physical exhaustion and physical symptoms as intense as a growing loss of feeling in my legs, every test imaginable to man, 10 visits to a "specialist" I have been told there is nothing wrong with me and it must be psychological. Working my way through the internet I found your description and it was shocking to read about myself. I am not ready to discuss details yet but the only way I deal with my situation is to write. So if you don't mind I will share what I wrote this morning as it really says it all for me.

MAYBE TOMORROW

I drag a lumpy old cushion to my cold stone doorstep. Wrapped in a fleece-lined hoodie, double socks and a deep-red soft wrap I place pen to paper in the hope of re-kindled creativity. I had promised I would make it to the Beer Garden opposite today but this, at least, is a beginning.

I study the mossy cobbles at my feet for the first time this year. April in Devon lifts the daffodil heads bobbing above the damp ferns. They still struggle against the chill breeze off the sea as it funnels past the remains of my old friend the Holly. Now a clumsy stump under the telephone wires. A skeleton cast aside by the estate on a day when I was not here to protest. The two poor camellias, now exposed, offer a solitary flower hidden in the glossy green leaves amongst the struggling buds.

The crocosmia has already taken over the flower bed. I had promised myself that I would thin them out this year but they strike through the white quartz stones collected over the years from the beach below, jostling aside oyster shells from the ancient midden behind the house,  multi-coloured glass bottles and a twisted shell-shaped silver spoon.

In contrast, the newly-painted, stark, white wall of the chapel hangs with the remains of the once proud clematus that used to bring exclamations from visitors clear across the valley as it flung itself in ravishing pink splendour over the chapel roof. Now stray fingers hang valiantly from the eaves, a few leaves hopefully a sign that it will once again lovingly embrace the hymns on a Sunday.

My eyes are drawn to the one offensive plastic pot amongst the mossy terracotta jumble; a testament to the careless builders with no regard for peace or pride. I remind myself I still have to re-pot the azalea properly but it will have to wait for a miracle bag of compost to turn up.

London pride spills over the curve of an old grinding stone, a soft pale-yellow primrose at its centre. Sheltered from the wind and thrusting proud against its winter fleece a Blue Moon rose; a present from a kindly neighbour with whom I once quietly shared a childhood memory of my mother's rose garden.
Anxiety creeps into my chest and begins to clench a fist around my heart. My pen falls silent a while. I listen to the bird song, the distant drawing of tides over cobbles and high above the lonely keening of a solitary buzzard. Pheasant calls mingle with seagull cries ...

And suddenly, all is broken. Estate strimmers slice across the page shattering my pen. Rapidly I retreat inside, cats nipping past my ankles, back into the safety of the house.

Perhaps tomorrow I will make it past the doorstep.